Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.
189 blog entries
Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 8, 2013

Product/industrial designer Jeffrey Bernett: CDS/Consultants for Design Strategy (New York)
Profile     Book List
“School only teaches you so much,” says Jeffrey Bernett in his book list introduction for Designers & Books. The designer of acclaimed residential and office furniture, household products, lighting, packaging, and interior architecture for companies such as B&B Italia, Design Within Reach, and Herman Miller recommends reading broadly as not only “a quest to gain knowledge” but also “a thought-provoking journey in its own right.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 3, 2013

Landscape designer Margie Ruddick: Margie Ruddick Landscape (Philadelphia)
Profile     Book List
“Novels and poetry have more power than textbooks to convey landscape ideas,” asserts landscape designer Margie Ruddick, whose work includes New York’s Queens Plaza; which has won awards for promoting a new idea of nature in the city, and the Living Water Park in Chengdu, the first ecological park in China, which cleans polluted river water biologically. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 18, 2012

Product/industrial designer Jonathan Olivares: Jonathan Olivares Design Research (New York)
Profile     Book List
Jonathan Olivares generated quite a bit of notice last year with the publication of A Taxonomy of Office Chairs (Phaidon Press), one of the more unusual design books of 2011. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2012

Product/industrial designer Stefano Giovanni: Giovannoni Design (Milan)
Profile     Book List
On industrial designer Stefano Giovannoni’s book list for Designers & Books are five titles by the French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard. Why? Giovannoni thinks it’s very important for a designer “to open one’s vision to the philosophical and sociological aspects related to the evolution of our society.” “I’ve never found a design book deep enough for a broad vision of our profession,” he says in the introduction to his book list. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter October 31, 2012

Architect Nathalie de Vries: MVRDV (Rotterdam)
Profile     Book List
Co-founder of the Dutch architecture and urban design practice MVRDV, Nathalie de Vries is the third designer in the collaboration between the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) that features book lists from the GSD and guest lecturers. De Vries will give a lecture at the GSD this Friday, November 2, and a display of books from her Designers & Books list as well as publications by and about MVRDV from the GSD’s Frances Loeb Library collections will be on view in the library through mid-November. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter October 23, 2012

Architect Farshid Moussavi: Farshid Moussavi Architecture (London)
Profile     Book List
Architect Farshid Moussavi—who will be the speaker this Thursday, October 25, in the Fall 2012 lecture series of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD)—is the second designer in the collaboration between the GSD and Designers & Books that features book lists from a variety of GSD guest lecturers. Concurrent with this collaboration, a display of selections from Moussavi’s Designers & Books list as well as publications from the library’s collections by and about the architect and her work are on view at the GSD’s Frances Loeb Library through October 26. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter October 4, 2012

Architect Tod Williams: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York)
Profile     Book List
Architect Tod Williams savors what he reads. “I read slowly and want to be deeply engaged,” Williams says in the introduction to his book list for Designers & Books. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter September 25, 2012

Product designer Ronan Bouroullec: Atelier Bouroullec, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (Paris)
Profile     Book List
Partners for over a decade, Ronan Bouroullec together with his brother, Erwan, have created innovative designs for products ranging from furniture, lamps, tableware, and textiles to architectural projects, exhibition catalogues and, recently, an iPad application. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter September 18, 2012

Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen: Jacobsen Architecture (Washington, D.C.)
Profile     Book List
In his more than 50 years of practice, architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen has been recognized for his eloquent modern residential work (20 awards from Architectural Record alone) that draws inspiration from vernacular American forms and local sites. “I endeavor to design buildings that belong, make the site look better and, hopefully, never shout,” he writes in his “Design Philosophy.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter September 11, 2012

Fashion designer Guo Pei: Rose Studio Fashion Co. Ltd. (Beijing)
Profile     Book List
Design writer Zara Arshad: Design China (Beijing)
Profile
Guo Pei—who has been called China’s answer to Alexander McQueen—talks to Design China’s Zara Arshad for Designers & Books—about the role of books in the fashion designer’s life and work. More...